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Saturday, July 14, 2012

"Well," as Jamie said as we pulled away from the theater, "That was most definitely a Wes Anderson movie."

I have a hard time criticizing directors or musicians for continuing to employ some of their trademarks in their work. Anderson's barely-there dialog direction, the same four or five shots he uses over and over in a rhythmic pattern (usually punctuated with a particularly lovely and well framed surprising shot: think the kid in the pool in Rushmore).

Nor can you hold the fact that none of his narratives ever really see closure against him. His are not movies that end with a wedding (well, maybe Royal Tenenbaums) but suggest that this is a particularly important juncture in the lives of many people: now let us observe.

If any of Anderson's affectations irritate you, you've been put on notice by his prior work, and this film is not for you.* This is most definitely not the movie where he changes things up and goes for a Dogma 95 verite style. If you're familiar with his work and somehow still keep paying to see it, then this may be a movie for you. I'm fond of Anderson's aesthetic, which may have overwhelmed The Life Aquatic and, to a degree, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, but I appreciate that he's got his own thing going on.

In some ways, much as I wanted to grab 15-year-old me and take him to see Rushmore, I would have loved to have had 12 year old me in tow for this one. It definitely understands the inevitability of a Lord of the Flies scenario when dealing with boys of that age, of how confusing and useless adults can seem (and how they have their own messes) and even the passion you might have applied to reading X-Men comics or scouting skills that you might also turn to a girl who actually pays you heed at that awful stage in life. Imagine were love requited at that age...

The cast is better than I'd heard by word of mouth, and Tilda Swinton was typically amazing even in her small part. But Jason Schwartzman's small role, no doubt written specifically for him, is pure gold. The herd of child actors, especially the two leads, are pretty great. And the moment of decision for the Khaki Scouts in their treehouse was the sort of monumental scene for kids that felt true, even in its ludicrousness.

In short, I enjoyed it. No real surprises, even down to <spoiler> the needless death of a pet </spoiler>. But it was a lovely film, and a nice bit of counter-programming to all the sci-fi and superhero stuff of the past year. This I say with tickets bough to see Dark Knight Rises next Saturday.

*seriously, if I hear any of you tell me you didn't like anything since Royal Tenenbaums but you still went to see this and you're complaining? What are you doing? Also, the people who trapped us so they could watch the credits? Stop it. You're not impressing anyone seeing who 3rd Best Boy was on the movie. I assure you he'd already left the theater before his name rolled.

In some ways, I feel like I could send the dozen or so regular readers of this site a copy of SuperGods by Grant Morrison and call it a day with The Signal Watch.

The basic breakdown of the book is equal parts comic book history and Grant Morrison's personal journey and how it associated with comics, eventually becoming his career, which, he reports, is fairly lucrative. If you read your fair share of comics history and Grant Morrison interviews (and I do), then there's not a whole lot new in the pages, but what Morrison manages to do is what he does so often in the comics he writes: takes an existing idea and takes it on a new journey with a new thesis statement.

The bits of bio about Morrison are what's been reported in comics press: working class Scottish upbringing, hippie anti-nuke parents, punk-era-living under Thatcher, bands, a really vocal attachment to his cats (man, I hear you), early comics he's still talking about, etc... And if you've read your David Hajdu, Lee Daniels and Gerard Jones, the comics history stuff is mostly known. However, it's interesting to hear about it through Morrison's filter, what grabbed him as a kid, what grabbed him as a young man, and as a guy at the tipping front end of Generation X (I consider myself the last, dying gasp of the X'ers before Y came along assuming the internet was a foregone conclusion), how we looks at Miller and Moore's books in relation to the industry. And, of course, he gets to talk a bit about the guys he works with who have been making comics history for the past two decades and more.

Flew back this evening, fortunately experienced no delays, no shenanigans, etc... I am really tired, I ate terribly today, and as always happens when I'm sort of watching Comic-Con news just tic by, I'm a little irritated that I've never gone. But then I remember how I do in crowds and meeting new people and... yeah.

Work today was interesting. Got to do a little cheerleading, shoe on podium banging, and do a lot of listening. And Columbus is a lovely town. We recommend.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Tomorrow I present in front of a bunch of folks from a consortium of libraries here in sunny Columbus, Ohio. The trip had been rumored since I was in Boston, but I didn't get confirmation that they actually wanted me here until last week. With the mad scramble to get paperwork done during a holiday week, it wasn't really all locked down til Tuesday that I was actually going.

So here I sit in a Springhill Suites in Columbus, Ohio. I've seen only two slivers of the town. The route I came in on and then the route I took to a nearby comics shoppe, something I like to do when I'm a-travelling. I have to give a thumbs-up to Laughing Ogre Comics, not just for the great name of the shop (it sounds like they really want to open a pub where people can play RPG's with no fear of wedgies), but to their shop itself, which was professional, friendly, well-stocked and well laid out. If in Columbus, we recommend.

The doc follows a group of young people, mostly under 30 I'd guess, who are a wide variety of youth ministers, parishioners, pastors of small congregations and then just friends and hangers-on who follow a few leaders in the group into the wacky world of card counting in order to try to beat the house at casinos all over the country. They form a small business which actually raises investment capital from folks they know and within the group, and then redistributes the winnings back out among the investors, the management and the gamblers.

Pretty much everything I wanted DC's pulp books to be that they just totally and completely were not. If you haven't been watching Dynamite lately, you're missing out on some pretty decent stuff, by the way.

As my dad's parents had divorced when he was a kid, Marvin was my father's step father, and so while there's no blood relation, there's no question he was my grandfather if all the usual granddad criteria apply.

The family loves the above photo of a young Marvin Ross, partially because his service in the 82nd Airborne during World War II is household legend. Africa. Italy. France. All this for a farm kid from Kansas who worked in FDR's NYA farms to make ends meet. With the end of World War II, he returned stateside, earned his degree and eventually worked for Eastern Airlines where he helped roll out the first computer systems for the company.

In many ways, his life often read to me as a Rosetta Stone for 20th Century America.

It can't go without saying that he was heavily involved with his local Legion post, serving as President, and active in the activities of the American Legion.

He and my grandmother visited often, hosted us in Florida (in Miami and then in Ocala), and my folks made certain we were as close as could be despite the geographic distance.

The more I learned of his days in the military and then his career in technology, the more questions I had, and he was always willing to share a story or two about dealing with punchcards or taking fire in a house in Italy.

In recent years, after the passing of my grandmother, he'd lived first in Houston near my folks, and more recently in Las Vegas with his son, Frank. The last few years was hard of hearing, but no less sharp when he was chatting (and you were two feet away and shouting).

I spoke with Frank and he reported that my grandfather spent the Fourth with his family, reportedly just his usual self.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

I've stopped trying to dwell on the end of my love affair with all things DC as nobody wants to hang out with the guy moping around after a break-up, but since DC Comics and I are still in the same neighborhood, I think we're feeling our way to try to be friends, even if we're not quite ready to spend a lot of time alone together right now as things would inevitably get awkward. We're just a person and a comic company who have both grown, and that has meant we've grown apart.

Looking at DC's October solicitations does feel like the stormy part of the break-up is over with, and after all my pleading and their curt refusals to pay me heed, it's nice to see a few overtures of friendship in the making. It'll never be what it was, but you have to learn to live with each other if you're going to see one another whether you like it or not.

We may disagree on Justice League, but I see things like the Joe Kubert Presents anthology on the list, and I can give a warm smile DC's direction. Just out of nostalgia, they're playing our song.

And then, the announcements about trade collections almost feel like finding a sweater left behind that you hold for a second and wonder what you should so with it, even as you like the feel of it between your fingers.

Green Lantern: Sector 2814 by Len Wein? Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth Volume 2 by Kirby? The Wonder Woman Chronicles by Marston? You can't just toss those memories out.

Reviewing the Super-Books is always where I hold my breath for an instant, watching to see what DC does, see how DC reacts as we bump into one another again on the street.

Monday, July 9, 2012

Back in college my pal Bryan Manzo was a music major, and one night (I cannot remember why), he started telling me about Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas. Based on Germanic and Norse mythos, the 4 operas (usually performed over four separate nights) trace the fate of gods and mortals in pursuit of a ring that will lead to obtaining untold riches (enough to rule them all). There are dwarves who live beneath the Earth, broken swords in need of reforging, dragons, etc...

Sound familiar?

It's no secret Tolkein was riffing on these ideas when he set out to build his own complete mythology in Lord of the Rings. It's for someone else to say whether he expected audiences to understand his references when the book saw publication.

Characters in the opera include Wotan (Odin), Loge (Loki), Donner (Thor), Valkyries, dwarfs, dragons, nymphs and other magical and mystical folks you hear referenced in everything from Thor comics to album covers.

Thanks to Bryan, I've known about the idea of the operas and how Tolkein's work reflected mythic elements since, say, 1997. But I'm also a pretty lazy fellow, so I kept a few facts in my back pocket, including the names of the operas and that they were a bit of a Rosetta Stone for a lot of modern mythology and cultural touchstones, be it pop-culture or otherwise. It was always one of those "well, maybe one day I'll look into it" sort of things.

About two months ago, somehow, in a single day, The Ring Cycle was referenced multiple times in print and online. I saw the trailer for an upcoming comic, I saw stills from a 1920's film about hero Siegfried (directed by Fritz Lang), and it popped up a few other places including Twitter and a conversation at work.

I am not one to ignore cosmic coincidence, and so I finally took a few steps.